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“The Year of the Remake” has brought up some great memories for songs we used to know and, in some cases, made new memorable versions of them. There’s also been plenty of good new songs to add to our playlists from new and upcoming music directors as well as many of our favourites. Here are 20 of the best from 2018, in order of their release.

‘Swagpur Ka Chaudhary’ – Kaalakaandi — Akshay Verma

Electric sound with electric imagery. A song to keep you dancing even if you’re sitting down with badass lyrics to boot.

‘Theher Ja’ – October — Armaan Malik

Soft, smooth, sad but not painfully so. Says come back but finds peace in memories and loss.

‘Nit Khair Manga’ – Raid — Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

A remake of his father’s song, Rahat doesn’t do well as a facsimile here but the modernisation by Tanishk Bagchi and the words which touch...

Bombay in 1946 was an epicentre for the cry for freedom from the British Raj. Lots of now famous and some infamous things happened during this time. One of these is the story of the biopic of the Urdu Bollywood scriptwriter Saadat Hasan Manto, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Manto, written,directed and produced by Nandita Das, tells his story through the eyes of those around him. This film has already been acclaimed at Cannes and was recently released to Indian audiences on the 21st of September.

The music direction of the movie has been given to Sneha Khanwalkar. Already well known for the Gangs of Wasseypur franchise and Detective Bymokesh Bakshy! amongst others, her gritty and real-life music is often perfect for the period, without needing to take the audience back to it. In this film its important to realise that the music is pre-Lata Mangeshkar when the giants were Shamshad Begum and Noor Jehan,...